saw a glowing sphere with a tail shoot across the sky from the West to East (from US toward Atlantic Ocean)

I was sitting on a boat on a dock on Isle of Palms, SC talking to my boyfriend. He was sitting on my right side. We were facing south looking down the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. While talking I saw something that looked like a shooting star but 100 times larger. I looked at it in awe, with my mouth open for a good 3 seconds. I didn't speak, I just elbowed my boyfriend until he looked at the object. By this time it was directly above us. It came from the US went directly over our heads and rounded down toward Isle of Palms and faded out. We both thought were going to see some type of explosion or something. It was extremely close to Earth. Looked like it was going to land. The sphere was about the size of a basketball. the sphere glowed yellow and had a red glow around it. It also had a very long tail about ten times the size of the ball. The tail was red where it met the ball and faded out to blue toward the end of the tail. From the red it turned to orange to yellow to green to blue at the point, or end of the tail. This was the first time I had ever seen anything like it. I didn't know to report it. I work at a television station and asked our meteoroligist about it and asked his opinion on what I saw. He did some research and had no idea. Then I witnessed the same type of event on Sunday, October 4th. The next day there was a small little article about it then the day after that there was a bigger article with your phone # and address.

((NUFORC Note: Similar report from same source, and in same location, for the date of 10/04/98. We do not know which is the correct date. PD))